Malcolm Coles » newspaper paid links

Google nails Express sites over paid links email

Malcolm Coles — Sun, 23 May 2010 13:49:28 +0000

Google says it has "taken action" and no longer trusts links from a major UK newspaper group - apparently referring to the Daily Express website.

Express website

In April, an Express Group email was made public offering links in online "SEO editorials" from £1,000 - with the aim of improving search engine rankings.

Such paid links are against Google's "terms of service" - and the Express (and OK) site initially suffered a page rank penalty in Google's toolbar (ie not much of a punishment at all).

"We saw that"

But Google has now gone further, according to an interview with Google's search quality team at Digital Inspiration. Question 9 asks about newspapers selling links on their sites to companies wanting to rank better in search engines. In reply, Google's Matt Cutts says:

If you’re talking about the recent incident in the UK, we saw that. Google’s quality guidelines are clear on this point: paid links shouldn’t pass PageRank.

Whether the paid links are in an “advertorial” or somewhere else on the page, that would violate our quality guidelines and Google would take action on those violations, both so that the link buyers wouldn’t benefit and so that the link sellers wouldn’t be trusted in the future by Google.

The only incident I know of recently in the UK is the Express case - so Matt Cutts appears to be saying the Express site (and presumably OK site) are no longer trusted by Google's algorithm.

Whatever your views on outing SEO tactics, this would be a fairly severe reaction to not using nofollow on paid links if carried forward. Thanks to Jon Hudghton (his blog's here) for spotting the info.

Daily Express and OK hit with PageRank penalty

Malcolm Coles — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:14:51 +0000

There was a story yesterday that the Express has been emailing SEOs selling links. I went over to the Express home page. And was fairly shocked to see it has a toolbar pagerank of just 4, which seems incredibly low for a newspaper site (er, it puts it on a par with my homepage toolbar pagerank!).

It definitely used to be higher than this.

This blog from April 2009 had it as PR7 (scroll down to the graph). As does SiteLogr (which collates data on websites). The same is true of Surcentro.

Update The OK website has also been hit. Its toolbar pagerank is now 2 as Andrew points out in the comments.

154 days ago it was PR 5 according to realwebsiteworth.com.
39 days ago it was PR 3 according to website shadow.
7 days ago it was PR 2 according to sitelogr.com.

I originally said it looks like Google has reacted to the revelation by penalising the visible pagerank of the Express. This data for OK suggests its being downgraded for some time - but did take another hit in the last month.

Express: pagerank penalty

Interesting.

Mirror starts to remove MoneyExtra links

Malcolm Coles — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:33:17 +0000

The Mirror's taken out some of the links to MoneyExtra that I recently said looked like paid-for links added for search engine optimisation reasons (which would put the site in breach of Google's guidelines - not that this would make it the only newspaper with paid links).

Of the 11 pages I pointed out, as of 10.30pm on Monday 14 Sept:

5 had weblinks to the MoneyExtra credit card page - 4 have had the MoneyExtra links removed. This one still has them, although the page layout has broken - maybe suggesting it's being republished - with the top navigation sitting over the content.
5 contained links to the MoneyExtra debt page - all 5 still contain this MoneyExtra link, but all 5 have the same broken-layout issue.
1 contained links to a MoneyExtra car insurance page - all these links have been removed.

Before and after

A before example

Before: with links to MoneyExtra

The same page now - without links

Now with links removed

I'll guess we'll have to wait and see what happens with the other pages. And I'm not sure why they've deleted them - couldn't the Mirror just have nofollowed them if they were genuine, editorially-chosen links and it was worried how they looked?

The Mirror should beware: it looks like it’s selling links to MoneyExtra

Malcolm Coles — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:29:33 +0000

First, some caveats. There's nothing illegal about selling links. But Google is against the practice and can penalize websites who take part in it. And there's no evidence that the Mirror is accepting money for this (you can see all my newspaper paid link posts here). And it wouldn't be a problem if it was. Do you think that's enough caveats?

Anyway, mirror.co.uk wants to beware how its links look. Let's take a look at a few pages all of which share these characteristics - and wonder how they appear to Google:

All contain three links to the same MoneyExtra page.
All the links use different anchor text.
The text happens to be competitive search terms.
MoneyExtra isn't mentioned in the article itself.
They were all published in August.

Pages on Mirror.co.uk from August

Here they are:

Headline: Sorting out the best credit card rate

This page from 20th August contains three links to the MoneyExtra credit cards page, using the link text "best credit card rate in the UK", "best credit card" and "credit cards". There is no mention of MoneyExtra in the article.

Two of the three links to MoneyExtra

Headline: Why do credit card providers offer credit cards with 0% interest?

This page from 20th August contains, er, three links to the MoneyExtra credit cards page, using the link text "credit card providers", "0% credit card interest rates", and "0% credit card deal". No mention of MoneyExtra in the article.

One of the three links to MoneyExtra

Headline: Best credit card transfer: Does one size fit all?

This page from 5th August for once contains, er, three links to the MoneyExtra credit cards page, using the link text "best credit card", "0% balance transfer rate" and "best credit card balance transfer rate". Again, no mention of MoneyExtra in the article.

Headline: Is it too late for debt management in England?

This page from 20th August contains, er, three links to the MoneyExtra debt page, using the link text "debt management", "debt" and "debt advice". There is no mention of MoneyExtra in the article.

One of the links to the MoneyExtra debt page

Headline: What is 'government debt management'?

This page from 20th August contains, guess what, three links to the MoneyExtra debt page, using the link text "Government debt solution", "debt management plans" and "debt". There's no mention of MoneyExtra in the article.

Two of the links to the MoneyExtra debt page

Something a bit different!

This page is a bit different. It's from the 20th August, naturally. But it contains FOUR links to the MoneyExtra car insurance quotes page - and mentions MoneyExtra in the article!

Some other pages

Other pages from August (not the 20th this time) which contain three links to a specific MoneyExtra page but which don't mention MoneyExtra in the article include: this one and this one and this one (OK, that one's only got two links) and this one (as has that one) and this one.

It does know how to nofollow

The Mirror has a page on the MoneyExtra site offering debt advice. It's here. However, all the links to external sites are nofollowed, which is what google advises you to do with paid links.

The end

Whatever's going on, the Mirror wants to be careful how it appears. Maybe it could also let us know the logic of which sites get linked to and which don't on pages like this.

Trinity Mirror stops selling followed links – Christian Science Monitor starts…

Malcolm Coles — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:39:34 +0000

I pointed out recently that the Trinity Mirror group was selling paid links in its footer without applying a nofollow. It's now stopped - the links now look like this: rel="nofollow">Life Insurance

I shall claim the credit for this sudden change. I thank you (more examples of newspapers selling links here).

I've now spotted that the Christian Science Monitor is selling paid links in its footer without applying nofollow. Obviously, you don't have to do this (it's a Google guideline, not the law). Don't blame me if their rankings get affected ...

And you should see their relocation page - stuffed full of keyword-rich links to other sites:

Unfortunately, Delia Smith is still selling paid links though.

Is Trinity Mirror selling followed links on its ic network?

Malcolm Coles — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:28:35 +0000

There's nothing illegal about being paid to add a link to your website - or paying someone to do this. However, Google doesn't like the practice - doing so can "can negatively impact [the selling] site's ranking in search results".

Alongside my other posts on newspapers' paid links, let's look at the ic network, one of Trinity Mirror's local news brands ...

At the very bottom of icCheshire pages in a set of links to other Trinity Mirror sites is one with the link text 'Remortgage'. This links to http://www.godirect.co.uk/remortgages.php. I can't find a connection between Go Direct and Trinity Mirror - they look like separate companies.

icCheshire home page - is one of these a paid link?

At the bottom of the icLiverpool page is the same box, but this one has a link with the keywords 'Life insurance' that links to http://www.godirect.co.uk/life-insurance.php.

icLiverpool - is the first link a paid one?

Of course, people are free to ignore Google's guidelines. However, they shouldn't complain if their ranking in search engine results drop ...

To avoid this fate, Google recommends using the nofollow tag, which Trinity Mirror isn't doing for these links.

It definitely doesn't recommend stuffing a keyword-rich link to a 3rd-party site in among links to other sites you own ... Or am I being overly suspiscious?